Morsi, from the Muslim Brotherhood, represents the equivalent of the American tea party in Egyptian politics—captive to the religious right, invested in austerity and smaller government, and contemptuous of workers and the political left.

Bachmann of course is one of the most notorious anti-Muslim politicians in the United States. She is squarely in the camp of those who propagate loony conspiracy theories about American Muslims as fifth columnists attempting to infiltrate, overtake and impose Sharia’ on an unsuspecting US government.

Bachmann gave strong backing to Sissi, describing his crackdown on sit-ins and demonstrations as the “frontline” in “the War against Terrorism,” and linking the Muslim Brotherhood to the attacks on 9/11.

The symbiosis between American Islamophobia and Egyptian instrumentalization of it is for different and varying ends but the rhetoric and optics are literally identical at times. Ilisha touched on this point in a previous article but take an Egyptian opposition newspaper, Al-Wafd, and its usage of the Islamophobic meme that Barack Obama is an undercover terrorist and member of the Muslim Brotherhood:

The headline reads like any Pamela Geller blogpost, it claims Barack Obama is a member of the Muslim Brotherhood, tied to AlQaeda and that he embraced the Brotherhood ideology in Indonesia.

Naguib Mahfouz couldn’t pen a more surreal tale: American Christian fundamentalist Islamophobes who have been democratically elected thanking and supporting non-democratically elected fascist military leaders who just orchestrated a coup in Egypt against a Muslim fundamentalist group that was democratically elected.

What is all the more trago-comic is that the Tea Party and Muslim Brotherhood have much in common: they are on the religious right, advocate unequal rights for minorities, support austerity and small government.

How much do these three goons know about Egypt? Do they know for instance that Egyptians are united in their disdain for the state that they pin their Messianic hopes upon: Israel?

How much do the Egyptians who now love Michele Bachmann as the best thing since ful know about the three American goons effusively praising their military leaders? Do they know how bigoted they are against Islam, do they know that Michele Bachmann is so rabidly pro-Israel that she lived on a Kibbutz?

While this is all extremely bizarre, it is unsurprising. This meeting is nothing more than a convenient opportunity for American Dominionist Islamophobes and Egyptian militarists to score some quick political points by reaffirming each others narratives.